Posts Tagged ‘blogging’
I got a short and sweet question today “Is blogging dead?
I was planning to start a blog, but I heard that I should create and optimize a Facebook profile instead.
What’s your advice?”
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That’s an interesting question and let me do my best to you an interesting answer.
If you read Stephanie Agresta (AKA Internet Geek Girl’s) post “Blogging is not dead (but I am really busy)“, you’d realize that like a lot of popular bloggers (eg. Sam Harrelson, Wayne Porter, Jim Kukral and Co), Steph has reduced the frequency of her “long form” (eg. WordPress blogging), in favor of micro-blogging (eg. Twitter and it’s companions).
So blogging is not “dying” nor will it “die” anytime soon.
The significant issue at hand is to get a grip on your long term business growth.
Are you being overly tactical – looking at the micro level of your business – whether you should set up a squidoo page, a hubpage, a facebook profile, throw up a social community site…
When really you need to be more strategic in nature!
If you need an analogy – strategic or being long term-focused means looking at the forest, and fashioning a master plan.
Being tactical means you’re looking at an individual tree and trying to optimize it. Taking care of the day-to-day. so to speak.
Don’t get me wrong, you NEED to be tactical in nature when you’re going into a new niche and building up your skills, but you shouldn’t be (more…)
If you’ve recently upgraded to WordPress 2.3.1, you could have either the best blogging experience if you’re a new user, or one of the worst, if you’ve been using WordPress for some time.
A key reason is mentioned on the WP-Testers list by Ryan Boren, one of the developers:
“The big schema change is the dropping of the categories, post2cat, and link2cat changes in favor of the new terms, term_taxonomy, and term_relationship tables. Any plugin that queries against the old table will break horribly.â€
What this means is that the new WordPress has shifted its data structure from a category-basedsystem to a new taxonomy.
If you’ve extensively used category-based plugins to enhance your SEO or social marketing efforts, you’ll bang into lots of error messages, as anyone who’s posted a comment on this blog will attest to.
Given the number of social-based plugins I’ve installed, and the extent to which they interface with the old (now defunct) category-based data strcuture, you can expect to (more…)
Is Microblogging all it’s cracked up to be?
You might’ve noticed that one of the widgets in the sidebar is missing.
Twitter has been an interesting experiment, especially some of the exchanges I’ve had with Sam Harrelson, who’s certainly an intelligent and expressive microblogger.
So what’s my opinion of microblogging?
It’s great if you’re at the sidelines of a seminar or tradeshow and a good way to get updates out. We might see some interesting updates from the Blog Haus at Affiliate Summit.
If you’re waiting in transit at the airport, or on a long subway ride, it’s a good time killer [Although I think you’d get more out of a good book…]
Where microblogging doesn’t work for me, is blogging in the midst of work.
If you disrupt your usual work to file a 140 character update, it can mess up your train of thought.
So though I’ll be checking in regularly to my twitter account, I likely won’t be checking it fantatically.
What’s your experience with microblogging?
Today’s Monday Question comes from Ken who asks:
“I’m a new Internet Marketer and like you, I plan to focus on blogging and affiliate marketing. I make about $500 a month now.
What’s the best way of doing this? I want to be the next Darren Rowse! I’m planning to quit my job by the end of the year after getting my bonus if this gig works out for me…”
My answer:
It’s great to hear you’re taking action on your goals, Ken, especially as you’ve found that the Internet lifestyle gives you more options.
I don’t think newer Internet Marketers can successfully master two areas, unless you’re very disciplined. You probably should focus on one area.
Between blogging and affiliate marketing, although the two fields are related, I’d recommend you focus on affiliate marketing as that activity directly generates income. With blogging, income tends to be a secondary focus (unless you’re highly skilled at monetizing your blog).
I’m more concerned with the fact that you’re generating $500 from your Internet Marketing efforts now.
Have you calculated your (more…)
One of the pleasures I enjoy is sharing some of the techniques I’ve experimented and refined in the art of Internet Marketing. So Lee Dodd’s “Webmasters Inspiration Month” competition was a fun exercise.
Check out my entry in their Blogging segment: “Ruthless For the People…A Blog Story” and see if it brings your blogging efforts up a notch.
If you enjoyed it, I’d appreciate your support.
You can:
The competition ends on Oct 31st, so your support is appreciated…
Thanks in advance!
A client of mine showed me their blog, and asked: “I’m not happy with the income my blog is generating. Can you help me increase my profit? I run both google adsense and affiliate offers“.
While I can’t show the blog or do a screencapture due to confidentiality reasons, here are some points to help you bring your blog monetization to the next level.
Nothing beats a well-tuned blog. This means tracking your analytics and conversions, and making the improvements and tracking, and repeating the cycle.
Broadly, you need to understand the intention and outcome of every visitor to your blog.
Are they there to browse? To make a comparison? To make a purchase?
I’ve found that AdSense publishing is suited for browsers who are still looking for information and aren’t close to making a buying decision yet.
I’ve found AdSense to provide a fairly low ROI (return on investment), so I’ve focused on my affiliate marketing efforts.
You can’t have it both ways…
It’s unlikely that a visitor will both click on an adsense ad AND buy a product from you – It’s either one or the other.
I’ve heard pseudo blogging “experts” say that you should have both adsense and affiliate offers on your blog, because someone who doesn’t buy, will click on your adsense ads instead.
THIS IS COMPLETE NONSENSE.
If you follow such ill-founded advice, you could possibly (more…)
